One year ago today my Mother died. It's a bittersweet day with lots of good memories but

[abqtommy]

I'm sure I'm going to miss her for a long time.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. My mom passed 22 years ago, my dad 44 years ago.

Still think of them daily....the memories will never leave you. Time will make it easier for you.

[Moostache]

2. I hope that the passing of time has brought some relief...

I lost my mother on Monday this week and its been overwhelming at times. The initial sharp pain is less today, but the overall sense of loss still feels like a sucking chest wound that can't be closed.

I know I will NEVER forgive those responsible for failing to contain COVID and resulting in isolation for anyone admitted to the hospitals in this horrible season of disease and death. There is only an incredibly toxic hate for them burning in my veins and I don't think that will EVER fade...

I hope the memories of your mother are warm and comforting for you and I do hope that it gets less painful in time as well.

[electric_blue68]

3. from cv19? Extra devastating! :'''''(

[Moostache]

5. We will never know the actual cause due to her cancer and other ailments...

Mom had been fighting cancer for 19 years and been through 7 treatment/remission cycles before May 2020 showed the latest recurrence and her condition was no longer able to sustain chemotherapy or regular treatments. As a last resort treatment, she began a course of Keytruda in July. The immunotherapy showed some positives at first - slowing the progression, but ultimately also manifesting side effects and organ difficulty. She also suffered a fall and compound ankle fracture that required surgery in September. After that, it was a grinding decline as initially COVID-19 restrictions left mom alone, isolated and depressed in 'recovery' and then 'rehab'...due to the pandemic and a need to protect staff and patients, there are NO VISITORS in many facilities. In the end, there was no additional treatments available, no miracle to make an 8th remission. We ran out of options, and time and mom ran out of reserves to fight on, but that isolation and depression really accelerated things and makes this a permanent, untreatable scar for myself and my family from now until we all pass in time.

This is the silent toll COVID is taking - not just the cases (which mom became positive test just 12 days ago, barely a week before she passed after many transfers and treatments and just plain bad luck) or the hospitalizations, but also the mandatory isolation and risk to other patients and to the staff. I can't speak highly enough about the nurses who tried to help my mom recover from what became an obviously terminal diagnosis by Halloween. They are amazing people, filled with empathy and dedication and fearlessness...but also stressed and over worked and threadbare from this slow moving disaster that is accelerating out of control while our government pretends to not see the truth. Rage is not a sufficient description of what sweeps over me in waves now when I see people not wearing masks in public or wearing them around their chins or cutting holes in them...I want to grab them and shake them and scream at them, but I know that would not help. Its a feeling that is hard to describe fully, powerlessness, futility, anger, and even hate - all wrapped into one...

My father, my brother and my sister and I were robbed of being able to hold a bedside vigil for mom. My final goodbye and conversation was by telephone - as I was not going to be permitted to visit her in the hospital after the COVID positive test - and I was violated by having my grieving process dictated by COVID protocols and restrictions and not the natural course of human contact.

I will miss her forever, and in my heart I know the cancer was the cause of her death, but I also know that the process of letting go and dealing with this has been branded into my soul by forces that simply did not have to be this way. For mom's memory, I struggle on and in time I will find a way to make sure that this stops happening to so many other families right now. This is just PART of the cost of COVID 19, the non-sensational, not-on-a-graph impact, but it is real, it is painful and it must be addressed for all who are in this mess...

[electric_blue68]

6. I've read about the isolation in...

Hospitals, and nursing homes.

It's horrific - the psychological pain of being isolated, or the loving family, and good friends unable to truly be with the people they love. It makes terrible sense that her increasing isolation contributed to hasten her dearth.

The fact that it didn't have be this way... can raise a coruscating fury in all who've been through it, or know people who have. And all who care about other people in general.

I'm so sorry you and your family has had to endure this.

[electric_blue68]

4. So sorry. I hear you. Lost mine...

12 1/2 years ago.

I remember saying to myself as she got up in years 'she wouldn't want me to be too sad for too long'.
Oh, I get sad, but not the devastating bouts of the early couple of years.

Glad you could feel the sweet memories, too, now. Totally understandable about missing her for a long time to come.